City of Dreadful Delight, Mexico City

Topic outline

General

City of Dreadful Delight, Mexico City: from Tenochtitlan, capital city of the Aztec Empire, to Post-Modern Megalopolis

Meets Monday, Wednesday & Friday 10:30am - 11:20am in Gander 1

This course explores the role of the city in the development of Mexican society and cultures from pre-colonial times to the present. In Latin America, capital cities encapsulate the country's political, industrial, financial, commercial, entertainment, intellectual, cultural, and religious identities. On their streets, and in their public and private buildings which have been built and rebuilt for hundreds of years, rich and poor, native and immigrant, men, women and children have worked, celebrated, rioted, studied, created, voted, fought, thrived, suffered, loved, hated, demonstrated and lived. The course will focus on Mexico City (Mexico) as a case study in which to read the evidence of the historical, political, social, economic, and cultural life of the country. Taught in English, the course is part of a Spring Break Trip to Mexico City.

Required texts available in Marlboro College Bookstore

Course Reader. In Reserve at the library.

Fuentes, Carlos. The Death of Artemio Cruz

Kinsbruner, Jay. The Colonial Spanish-American City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004) e-brary

León-Portilla, Miguel, ed. The Broken Spears. The Aztec Account of the